blessed are the meek

I just read again the chapter from my beatitude book (What Jesus Meant, an amazing book, I reiterate.) dedicated to, "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." And as I was driving home, this song came on the radio, "Something in the way she moves," by James Taylor.

There's something in the way she moves,
Or looks my way, or calls my name,
That seems to leave this troubled world behind.
And if I'm feeling down and blue,
Or troubled by some foolish game,
She always seems to make me change my mind.

Chorus:
And I feel fine anytime she's around me now,
She's around me now
Just about all the time
And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now,
She's been with me now quite a long, long time
And I feel fine.___________

It isn't what she's got to say
But how she thinks and where she's been
To me, the words are nice, the way they sound
I like to hear them best that way
It doesn't much matter what they mean
If she says them mostly just to calm me down

Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning
And I find myself careening
Into places where I should not let me go.--
She has the power to go where no one else can find me
And to silently remind me
Of the happiness and the good times that I know, got to know.


That song could have been written for Becky and me, and it relates so well to the beatitude. Meek is not weak; meek comes from a place of strength and choosing not to use that strength, be it military strength, physical strength, moral strength, whatever. Meek is Desmond Tutu celebrating mass on the hill overlooking the island where Nelson Mandela and countless others were incarcerated unjustly. Meek is Ghandi and Martin Luther King looking at the violence done to them and understanding that escalating the violence could only hurt their causes. And so they took it with all the pain that must have come from watching their followers suffer and die. No, the weak thing would have been to fight back with violence in kind; meek is strong.

I am not meek. I rage sometimes, and I escalate conflict way too often. Becky was meek, and she could find me wherever I was and silently remind me of the good things in my life - most notably, her very self. Becky was so confident in her own goodness and her own strength that she did not need to display it, that she did not need to be better than others but was content with herself. I miss that so much in my life right now. I wish I could be more meek. I wish I could feel strong enough to be meek, but I still feel broken so often, and there are times when exposing that brokenness is okay, but sometimes I want to cover it and the best way I have found, especially when I haven't gotten enough sleep, is with rage.

And so that is my prayer for myself for this day and for as long as it takes: help me to trust in your strength in me enough to allow myself to be meek. Let me be part of the water in the river, not the stone in its path to be broken down inexorably.